“George Andrews” was the second feature-length film made by a professor at New Mexico State University. The late Orville Wanzer was a pioneering yet under-recognized filmmaker whose influence helped shape the evolution of “the modern western” and independent avant-garde filmmaking in the United States.
The rediscovered and restored film will be screened for one night only at 6 p.m. Monday, Feb. 24 at the Fountain Theatre in Old Mesilla. Doors will open at 5:30 p.m., and the event will likely sell out. Tickets are $17 online, $18 at the door for general admission and $10 at the door for students. Julia Smith will introduce the film and highlight the painstaking restoration process to revive “George Andrews.” She will remain after the screening to have a conversation with the audience.
“This is the best existing digital copy of ‘George Andrews,’” said Smith, the scholar who spent the last five years assessing, digitizing and re-housing the visual content of all 142 containers in the Wanzer archive in the Rio Grande Historical Collection at NMSU to ensure their long-term preservation.
Wanzer was hired as an NMSU English professor in 1959, where he taught some of the first film studies courses and co-created the NMSU film society that ran until the 80s and paved the way for the establishment of the Mesilla Valley Film Society. In 1966, Wanzer created the first filmmaking program at NMSU, one of the first in the nation, moving his teaching over to the newly created journalism department where he taught students how to make experimental, documentary and narrative films until he retired in the late 1980s.
This is the only known copy of “George Andrews” preserved and made accessible thanks to the Rio Grande Historical Collections and Smith’s efforts. Using Wanzer’s original script, Smith has painstakingly added subtitles and carefully stitched recently digitized magnetic tape sound to the original 16mm transfer, a process she began in 2019.
“George Andrews” is a semi-autobiographical film starring Wanzer, which he wrote and directed.
“A gothic psychological shocker, this cinematic treasure challenges perceptions of time, memory, and narrative truth,” Smith said. “It reflects his mastery of avant-garde storytelling, employing experimental techniques like montage, slow-motion and non-linear narrative to dismantle conventional ideas about marriage, academia and middle-class life of a university professor. The films of Maya Deren, Ingmar Bergman and Jean Cocteau share the stylistic signatures of ‘George Andrews.’”
The event will also mark the first public viewing of the trailer for “Birth of the Acid Western,” Smith’s upcoming documentary about Wanzer’s contributions to cinema and the cultural significance of the Acid Western genre.
“This screening is a fundraiser for my independent documentary ‘Birth of the Acid Western’ that highlights Wanzer’s pioneering filmmaking in Las Cruces, New Mexico’s rich film history, and my five years’ research in the Orville Wanzer film archives at NMSU's Rio Grande Historical Collections,” Smith said. “Proceeds will support the completion of my film by helping me run a fundraising campaign across New Mexico historical theatres as I work with local artists in the film industry on this major project. I cannot do it alone. My goal is to raise at least $25,000 in donations from the community to support this effort.”
Since launching a collaboration with the Institute of Historical Survey in Mesilla Park in 2019, Smith has successfully digitized approximately 70 films (about half of the Wanzer collection) to ensure Wanzer’s artistic legacy endures for future generations.
Those who wish to support progress on this project may visit https://epcf.org/acidwestern to make a tax-deductible donation or donate directly to the film fund. Tickets to see “George Andrews” are available at https://www.tickettailor.com/events/birthoftheacidwesterndocumentary/1554822 .
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CUTLINE: Orville Wanzer, late NMSU professor and pioneering filmmaker from the 60s, 70s and 80s, whose influence helped shape the evolution of “the modern western” and independent avant-garde cinema in the United States. (Courtesy photo)
CUTLINE: Scenes from “George Andrews,” a film by the late Orville Wanzer, NMSU professor and pioneering filmmaker. A screening is set for 6 p.m. Monday, Feb. 24 at the Fountain Theatre in Old Mesilla. (Images courtesy Julia Smith)
CUTLINE: Julia Smith, a film scholar and former visiting assistant professor in the NMSU Department of English and Gender and Sexuality Studies has worked for the last five years repairing, re-splicing and rehousing the fragile reels of the Wanzer film collection into archival storage and digitizing about half of the films. (Courtesy photo)